” If you only follow news in the Left wing echo chamber, you might be tempted to think that Americans have begun turning their backs on gun ownership. Whenever there is one smidgen of data to suggest a decline in sales, the media will latch onto it as proof of a larger trend. The most recent example was when Virginia saw a slight decrease in background checksfollowing three years of exponential growth. (Note the difference in terminology between actual sales and background checks which will become crucial a bit later.) Time Magazine, just last summer, went so far as to list guns as one of the ten things people just aren’t buying anymore. (Along with cereal, gum and … bread. Really?) But is there any truth to this? Are we falling out of love with our beloved tools of self-protection?

The media’s claims about gun purchase trends are based upon the annual numbers of firearm-related background checks conducted through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). NICS statistics are not a perfect measure of gun purchases, but to the extent they illustrate trends in purchases, they show that the rate at which Americans are acquiring firearms is actually increasing.”